UK: Daily Mail Newspaper Op-Ed Asserts That Smoking Cannabis Can Turn You Into A Terrorist

The UK’s Daily Mail newspaper continues its 2017 version of “Reefer Madness” with this quite frankly ridiculous assertion that cannabis will turn you into a Jihadi warrior

Penned by Dr Max Pemeberton, more of him later. We learn the following

What was going through Salman Abedi’s mind when he made that journey to Manchester Arena on Monday night? How does someone do something so unspeakably evil as to slaughter and grievously injure innocent young children in this way?

Was he a psychopath? Was he evil? I do not know the answer but I do know, as the Mail reports today, that according to his friends Abedi was a frequent and heavy cannabis smoker.

Religious belief tends to be associated with lower rates of alcohol and drug use, but cannabis has been shown to increase people’s preoccupation with religion, especially in young men.

Surely, it is no coincidence that time and time again, in the aftermath of recent terrorist attacks, as we learn more about the perpetrators and try to understand their motivation, we discover that cannabis was a part of their daily lives.

Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John — the man who murdered hostages James Foley, Alan Henning and David Haines, among others — was reportedly a heavy cannabis smoker.

Richard Reid, the shoe bomber who tried to blow up a plane flying from Paris to Miami in 2001, smoked cannabis as a youngster, as did the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale

Amal el-Wahabi, one of the first British women to be convicted of terror offences — she was raising funds for her husband who was fighting for ISIS — since the Syrian conflict began, smoked the drug, as did Paris bomber Ibrahim Abdeslam.

And so on and so forth

Pemberton concludes by writing

It is a roll call of horror that should shame the liberal elite who push for a loosening of drug laws. It is their complacency and ignorance that has led to the epidemic of cannabis use that clinicians like me encounter on a daily basis and are powerless to stop.

…For too long, we have ignored the terrible toll of this drug. Too many people have dismissed cannabis as harmless — something to help you relax and chill — and that an individual should be free to buy and use as they choose.

Now, more than ever, we need to wake up to a pernicious substance that ruins not just the lives of those that take it, but countless others around them in ways we might never have imagined.

Obviously this appears to us like the perfect argument for a regulated market where very young men and women should have the same access to cannabis as they do to alcohol and cigarettes as well as the associated educational programs. And a market in which the black market holds sway in product development, marketing and distribution.. but don’t let us get in the way of a good tabloid story.

It amazes us that the US states of Oregon, Washington, & Colorado aren’t at virtual civil war with themselves and in the midst of a jihadi nightmare with the amount of people now legally consuming cannabis there.